Recent technological advances in the semiconductor industry have permitted dramatic increases in circuit density and complexity, and commensurate decreases in power consumption and package sizes for integrated circuit devices. Single-chip microprocessors now include many millions of transistors operating at speeds of hundreds of millions of instructions per second to be packaged in relatively small, air-cooled semiconductor device packages. A byproduct of these technological advances has been an increased demand for semiconductor-based products, as well as increased demand for these products to be fast, reliable, and inexpensive. These and other demands have led to increased pressure to manufacture a large number of semiconductor devices at an efficient pace while increasing the complexity and improving the reliability of the devices.
As the manufacturing processes for semiconductor devices and integrated circuits increase in difficulty, methods for manufacturing, testing and debugging these devices become increasingly important. Not only is it important to ensure that individual chips are functional, it is also important to ensure that batches of chips perform consistently. In addition, the ability to detect a defective manufacturing process early is helpful for reducing the possibility of manufacturing a defective device. It is also helpful to be able to perform the manufacture, testing and debugging of integrated circuits in an efficient and timely manner.
One method of testing integrated circuit dice currently involves the use of coaxial cable or other conductive metal cables to relay information, such as between the device under test (DUT) and the tester or test fixture, and between a testing arrangement and an analysis device or computer. In one common implementation a test head that contains an interface for stimulating and receiving a response to the stimulation from the die draws signals from the die to a computerized tester that both controls the stimulation provided and analyzes the response. As the operating speeds of integrated circuit dice increase, however, conventional methods of analyzing the dice can introduce difficulties including signal delay, signal corruption and other speed and quality-related issues.